NAO: Criminal justice system not delivering value for money

The criminal justice system is not delivering value for money, according to the findings of a report from the National Audit Office (NAO).

Central government spends £2bn each year on the criminal justice system, excluding the police, prisons, and other bodies who prosecute cases.

The NAO found an improvement in the management of cases since 2010/11, with the proportion of effective trials in the magistrates' court increasing from 34 per cent in the year ending September 2011 to 39 per cent in 2015.

Some 9,489 more cases were heard on time by magistrates in the year to September 2015, compared to four years earlier.

However, the NAO also found that two-thirds of cases still do not progress as planned, and there is significant regional variation in the performance of the system.

A victim of crime in North Wales has a 7 in 10 chance that the trial will go ahead at Crown Court on the day it is scheduled, whereas in Greater Manchester the figure is only 2 in 10.

The large variation in performance across the country means that victims and witnesses will experience very different levels of service.

In 2014/15, the criminal justice system saw an 11 per cent reduction in the number of trials heard in England and Wales, down 24,481 compared to 2010/11.

Trials that are delayed or collapse entirely create costs for all the participants, including the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), victims, witnesses, defence lawyers and the Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS).

Last year, the CPS spent £21.5m on preparing cases that were not heard in court. Of this £5.5m related to cases that collapsed due to 'prosecution reasons', including non-attendance of prosecution witnesses and incomplete case files.

The remaining £16m relates to cases where the prosecution was not directly responsible for the case not proceeding as planned, for example where the defendant changed their plea to guilty either on the same or a reduced charge.

Backlogs in the Crown Court increased by 34 per cent between March 2013 and September 2015, and waiting time for a Crown Court hearing increased from 99 days to 134 over the same period.

Between 2010/11 and the year ending September 2015, £44m additional costs were reported due to the increasing length of Crown Court trials.

The NAO concluded that £4m could be saved by the CPS if the level of 'cracked' trials in the bottom half of Local Criminal Justice Board areas reduced to the level of the top quartile.

The NAO said that while there can be multiple points of failure as cases progress through the system, these mistakes are often not identified until it is too late.

A joint 2015 inspection by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and HM Crown Prosecution Service Inspectorate found that 18.2 per cent of police charging decisions were incorrect.

Such decisions, said the NAO, should be picked up by the CPS at an early stage, but 38.4 per cent of cases were not reviewed before reaching court.

The CPS and Ministry of Justice's reform programme, which includes more efficient digital working and the roll-out of a single digital case management system accessible by all parties, will provide the tools for a more efficient, less paper-based system, but it is not sufficient on its own, according to the NAO.

The audit office argue that the system as a whole is inefficient because its individual parts have strong incentives to work in ways that create cost elsewhere.

Sir Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said: 'Delays and aborted hearings create extra work, waste scarce resources, and undermine confidence in the system. Some of the challenges are longstanding and complex - others are the results of basic avoidable mistakes.

As an example, the NAO cite court staff, acting under judicial direction, schedule more trials than can be heard so that there are back ups when one trial cannot proceed. This is both a cause and a result of the inefficiencies in the system, and leads to costs elsewhere, such as witnesses who spend a day waiting to give evidence for a trial that is not then heard.

'The ambitious reform programme led by the ministry, HMCTS, CPS, and judiciary has the potential to improve value for money by providing tools to help get things right first time, but will not in itself address all of the causes of inefficiency,' added Morse.

'It is essential that the criminal justice system pulls together and takes collective responsibility for sorting out the longstanding issues.'